How to measure the impact of EDI in Sport and Physical Activity

Why your organisation should measure the impact of EDI in Sport and Physical Activity

Measuring the impact of your efforts can light your path forward using evidence-based decision making. When you know what has been successful, or not, you can develop a strategy that is data driven. In the sports and Physical Activity (PA) sector there is uneven data and no ready blueprint for how to reach all groups within the population and for some, this is the first time it is being attempted. This means there will be mistakes along the way, but it also presents an extraordinary opportunity to break new ground.

As everyone is aware, finding funding for your organisation can be an uphill battle. Establishing secure metrics for how you measure success will be invaluable in demonstrating why these endeavours should be funded.

1. It will help you understand what EDI initiatives work

Every organisation has Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) work they are proud of. Keeping track of your work allows you to learn and build on each initiative and prevents you from repeating mistakes across the organisation. Maintaining good records and case studies that you can share across your sport and PA can keep you moving forward. Join our Community of Practice to hear and learn from EDI efforts across the sector. Contact sport@inclusiveemployers.co.uk for more information.

EDI as a concept can seem overwhelming and it is difficult to know where to start. Establishing a baseline of data can help narrow down exactly where and how to intervene. Participation rates and demographic information can help pinpoint groups that aren’t being engaged by your efforts and qualitative insights from surveys and focus groups can identify why.

Measuring impact can be critical in motivating change. Whether your organisation is experiencing fatigue or requires convincing, providing concrete data about successes or gaps can help to inspire and reinvigorate your colleagues. Sometimes, EDI work can feel like a lot of slog for very little reward. Being able to measure the impact of your actions can demonstrate or remind you how important it really is.

2. It will help you measure success

Finally, evaluating your work can help unearth positive stories. Being able to share successes can help engage more people from diverse groups by showing a willingness to invest in communities and demonstrating accountability.

How can we go about it?

How to evaluate your EDI data

Participation rates can be an indicator of improvements in inclusion as your sport or PA grows more appealing to different groups because of your efforts. Keeping track of retention and drop-out rates over time can capture trends and identify areas where there are barriers.

If you have high performing athletes, it can be valuable to measure the success of athletes or participants from your underrepresented groups and how much they are able to achieve. This will help measure whether your EDI efforts in the pathway have successfully opened opportunities or removed barriers for athletes from underrepresented groups.

1. Look at your leadership

Understanding which identities and experiences are represented in your leadership can help drive change at the highest levels. There are useful indexes to help you compare against the rest of the sector, such as Sporting Equals’ Race Representation Index, but it is more important to compare against your aims.

For example, are you aiming to be representative of the sport or physical activity as it stands now? Or how you would like to see the sport and physical activity grow? You might have 20% ethnically diverse people or people from the global majority which matches the representation of the wider population in your area.

However, if your leadership team is made up of 12 people and your sport or PA is underrepresented in ethnic diversity it might be beneficial to have a range of people from different ethnicities in your leadership team, in which case the percentage becomes less important than the impact.

2. Measure your demographics

When measuring demographics, it can be hard to narrow down on intersectional identities as you are working with lower numbers that may not be safe to disclose. This doesn’t mean that intersectional experiences should be neglected; there are a wealth of experiences that can help identify specific barriers when we treat people as a whole, rather than by an individual characteristic. If you are not able to collect much demographic insight on intersectional experiences, then seek it out through other means such as qualitative methods or partnership engagement.

Qualitative methods can include engagement and satisfaction data. By conducting surveys, interviews or using focus groups you can get rich information about how different groups experience your sport or physical activity. You can gain keen insights into how people feel accepted, included and supported at each level from team, coach, club, active partnership and across facilities.

3. Evaluate the success of your programmes

Evaluating the success of your programmes and partnerships can be extremely useful beyond understanding the impact of that specific initiative. Alongside measuring the reach and impact, it presents you with the opportunity to gain further insight from those that have participated and by identifying those that haven’t.

4. Build a bank of EDI data

Finally, building a bank of data by auditing the availability and accessibility of sports facilities, equipment and infrastructure geographically can identify both where to direct resources and why people may not be engaging.

Hopefully, this article has demonstrated the importance of measuring your impact as well as suggestions of how to go about it. To provide inspiration for this National Inclusion Week, we have provided some daily actions which include thinking about how you reflect and evaluate, available here. If you want to find out more about sharing good practice across the sector, please contact us at sport@inclusiveemployers.co.uk.